Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images; Mike Coppola/Getty
- A viral TikTok claimed that Imagine Dragons wrote songs for the Spider-Man musical.
- Yahoo reported in 2013 that the band had recorded demos as inspiration for the show.
- However, it’s unclear which, if any, songs from their album “Night Visions” were part of it.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
On Thursday, viral videos circulated on TikTok that revealed a shocking fact: the alternative band Imagine Dragons, which broke through in 2012 with their hit song “Radioactive,” had worked on the famously disastrous Spider-Man musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.”
“Turn Off The Dark” was a production that was notoriously plagued with issues, and eventually closed in 2014 following injuries on set, funding issues, and technical mishaps. As Nicholas Barber wrote for BBC Culture in 2020, the show eventually became “synonymous with theatrical disaster.” It also featured music written by Bono & the Edge of U2.
What may have been less commonly known was that the band Imagine Dragons, as Yahoo Entertainment reported in 2013, was also briefly tied to the show as well, and viral TikToks are bringing that information to a new audience.
“[C]an we talk about the fact that this song and these guys’ entire album were just discarded songs from a failed attempt at making a spiderman musical?” TikTok user @katiahuddleston wrote in the caption of a TikTok video with the band’s hit song “Radioactive” playing in the background. Posted on Wednesday, it’s been viewed approximately 1.3 million times and has amassed over 375,000 likes.
It may be a bit of a stretch to say that the band's 2012 album "Night Visions" was written entirely for "Turn Off The Dark." There's also the matter that the musical, while indubitably disastrous, did have a run on Broadway.
Yahoo Entertainment reported that music producer Alex da Kid was looking for inspiration for "Turn Off The Dark" when he started working with Imagine Dragons, hoping that they could "help [him] come up with ideas for U2." However, the band's demos were reportedly too good, and Alex da Kid signed them to his own label KIDinaKORNER rather than having them collaborate on the show's score. In September 2012, the group released "Night Visions."
Since then, speculation has circulated online that many of the biggest hits from the album, "Radioactive" and "Demons," included Spider-Man references, although it's unclear exactly which, if any, songs from the album may have been demos written for "Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark."
The coincidence, however, seemed too perfect. "[R]adioactive was literally about the spider," one comment with 70,600 likes read.
Another video from TikTok user @h0neyb0nza, set to Imagine Dragon's "On Top Of The World," amassed over 150,000 likes and 638,000 views, with @h0neyb0nza writing in the caption of the video, "my day was ruined [because] this girl on tiktok told me this album was a failed attempt of a spiderman musical."
While some of the viral TikToks may be a bit of an exaggeration based on previous reported material, one thing is certain: "Radioactive" could have totally been about the spider.
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